Sound On Sight Radio #238: Howl / The Times Of Harvey Milk

Some 25 years back, Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein made The Times of Harvey Milk, a documentary about the titular San Francisco city councilman who was not only the first openly gay elected government official in the United States, but became an outspoken champion of gay rights across the country, until his murder at the hands of fellow councilman Dan White. The documentary wound up winning that year’s Best Documentary Feature prize at that year’s Academy Awards, and of course was also the inspiration for Gus Van Sant’s widely praised biopic Milk. Epstein and Friedman are back with Howl, which made its Montreal premiere at the Image-Nation film festival. It’s an ambitious new fictionalized feature about Allen Ginsberg’s landmark poem of the same name, the hardships that went into its composition, as well as the court battle to determine whether or not the piece could be censored under US obscenity laws. We’ll be talking about both the doc and their new foray into dramatic territory.